Metropolitans of Limassol Athanasios, Nikiforos of Kykkos, Isaias of Tamasos, and Bishop Nikolaos of Amathous issued a statement expressing strong reaction against the decision of Archbishop Chrysostomos of Cyprus to commemorate Metropolitan Epifaniy of Kyiv, thus recognizing the autocephaly of the Orthodox Church of Ukraine in this way.
They speak in the strongest terms and essentially question the right of Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew to proclaim Metropolitan Epifaniy as Primate of the Orthodox Church of Ukraine, stating that the Ecumenical Patriarch should have first addressed “the canonical Metropolitan of Kyiv, Onufriy, in concert with the Moscow Patriarchate, to which it belongs, as well as the assent of the local Orthodox Primates.”
The four hierarchs state that this move of the Archbishop of Cyprus “constitutes a blatant violation of the polity of our Orthodox Church and its operation.”
They also emphasize that “the act of Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew to grant ‘autocephaly’ to the schismatic structures of the Church of Ukraine is an arbitrary, non-canonical and anti-ecclesiastical action, in the sense that the Ukrainian Orthodox Church belongs to the Patriarchate of Moscow and the intervention in the jurisdiction of the said Patriarchate. Because of this, the Russian Orthodox Church reacted by justifiably severing communion with the Ecumenical Patriarchate, as well as with the Churches of Greece and that of Alexandria.”
They also speak of an “untimely” decision on the part of the Archbishop of Cyprus, “in fact, at a critical time for our national issue and the threatening actions taken by the Turkish expansive voracity which threatening to shrink our nation.”
“We call on the Archbishop to immediately reverse this non-canonical and invalid act and, at the same time, we ask all our fellow bishops of the Church of Cyprus to jointly ask for an extraordinary meeting of our Holy Synod to address this issue and decide accordingly.”
